Requirements

The IPT is designed under the assumption that the server on which it is run has consistent Internet connectivity. Though many functions of the IPT work even when offline, some aspects of the IPT (GBIF registration, extension installation, controlled vocabularies, and external databases for source data), require communication with external Internet resources. From the perspective of IPT administration and management, the speed of the Internet connection affects only such communications. Access to the IPT web application and its services from beyond a local intranet also requires consistent connectivity, and slow connectivity may have an adverse affect on these aspects, especially when transferring large data sets.

Though it can be used simply as a tool to generate Darwin Core Archives, the IPT is meant to be a discoverable and accessible Internet-based application and service. To support this functionality, the server on which the IPT is installed must be able to support access to the application and services through a stable URL.

Although not required by the IPT, GBIF recommends to run the IPT over secure HTTPS (TLS, which replaced SSL) if possible.

The server hosting the IPT installation must make at least 256 MB RAM memory available to the application.

The space required by the IPT application is around 100MB. The contents of the IPT data directory after installation require less than 1MB of disc storage, writable by the IPT. However, the content of the data directory will grow as resources are created, and will require space roughly equal to the size of the files or tables containing the imported data sets. A reasonable estimate for the size of a relatively rich occurrence data set is one kilobyte per record. Normal usage of the IPT appends information to the log files, which will grow over time, but which generally require minimal disc space.

The current version of the IPT is tested to run on Java 11 and 17. Please refer to the OpenJDK release roadmap, the Oracle Java version Roadmap or documentation from your Linux distribution for an overview of how long your Java version will be supported.

See the installation instructions for notes on operating system and servlet container versions.

Running an IPT is a commitment. Data should be backed up regularly, and security updates (for the operating system or the IPT) must be applied soon after they become available.